In the last
decade of the nineteenth century Doctor Thomas Neill Cream was hanged at
Newgate for poisoning prostitutes. More recently a letter appeared in the press
written by a W. Jack Heaney of Lincolnshire, stating that his grandfather had a
friend, the hangman Billington, who insisted that Cream had gasped with his
last breath: “I am Jack ---” before being dispatched abruptly below. That
Billington was apparently the only one to hear the confession in no way
detracts from the veracity of his claim, since he was obviously positioned
closest to the hooded and therefore slightly muffled wretch.

Intrigued
and, like the Victorian police, having not a clue as to the identity of “Jack the Ripper”, I decided to inquire into
the history of the sinister Doctor Cream - finding that he had during the
Whitechapel atrocities in 1888, to all intents, been confined in an American
prison for the crime of murder by means of strychnine poisoning.

Yet an odd
contradiction in Cream’s character caught my attention. Raisedfrom early childhood in Canada, he was
already displaying criminal tendenciesas a high-flying medical student at McGill University while also
indulging infrequent bouts of
religious fervour, often preaching piously at Sunday school.

I felt it
questionable whether such a man, doubtless convinced in that awfulmoment of reckoning that Divine
Judgment was at hand, would with his lastbreath utter a false confession. Unless, of course he was not merely
depraved butinsane - a plea which
was found totally unacceptable at his final trial in 1892.

The venue of
Cream’s first conviction having been Chicago of the eighteeneighties, which, as a result of
widespread corruption was soon to become agangland citadel for the likes of Al Capone, I began seriously to
considerwhether, after all, the
good doctor might not have managed to bribe his wayout of jail earlier than was recorded.
Particularly since one year previousto the Ripper crimes he had come into what was for those days a sizableinheritance.

Given that
under such circumstances he had been able to buy his freedom andescape to England some time before
1888, and that he certainly specialised inthe sadistic murder of prostitutes, Thomas Neill Cream would undoubtedly,have been a prime Ripper suspect; but
it is generally assumed that his termof imprisonment in America constituted a perfect alibi. A hardened cynichowever might be disposed to question.
such an assumption, readily acceptingthat large sums of available cash could (and can) open any doors ---even
thebarred variety.

Mr. A.C.
Trude, a prominent American attorney who had defended Creamin the notorious Chicago murder trial
went on record as suggesting thatthe subsequent shortening of Cream’s life sentence, ostensibly to ten
years, “was effected by
political influence obtained by a free use of money”; and,furthermore, that on commencement of his
sentence in 1881 the prisoner’sfather
had furnished a well-known politician with the sum of five thousanddollars, to procure, so it was implied, his
unconditional release.

From which
the inference may be drawn that there is nothing new in politicalsleaze, except perhaps the term,
turning up Donald Bell’s inspirational
article published in `The Criminologist’(Volume 9, No. 33, 1974) entitled `Jack the Ripper - the Final Solution’,
I wasencouraged to find his
hypothesis outlining Cream as the Whitechapel slayeragreed in almost all essentials, with my own,
particularly on the pivotal issue ofCream having been bought out or escaped from jail before 1888. Far from
beingimpossibility, as Bell
revealed, between 1924 and 1936 when prison securitywas far tighter than it had been back in the
eighteen eighties, it was recordedthat as many as 204 convicts escaped from Illinois jails. But had Cream
doneso? Donald Rumbelow, in his
excellent book `The Complete Jack the Ripper’M. H. Allen, London 1987); he thought not, by reason of three affidavits.
none ofwhich, however, in my
opinion, establishes entirely beyond doubt that Creamwas still in prison until 1891. The substance
of these is as follows:

1) On the
death of Cream’s father in 1887 an executor to his Will, ThomasDavidson, applied for evidence as to
Cream’s guilt in respect of the murderfor which he was serving a life sentence in Illinois. Davidson claimed hereceived “such documentary evidence as
convinced me of his innocence.” Onewonders by what evidence he was so convinced, for during an interview
withthe `Chicago Tribune’ of
28th October 1881, Senator Fuller expressed no suchconviction: “he … believes there is as little
error in the record of this case as inany criminal case he was ever connected with, and he does not believe it
possiblefor the Supreme Court
to find anything than can reverse the case. It is a case,he says, where there can be no possible doubt
of the guilt of the defendant, andthe crime is one that stands almost without a parallel in the annals of
crime.”

Davidson
nevertheless pursued his efforts to secure Cream’s pardon up until thesummer of 1891. “...he came to me
immediately in Quebec on being liberated …”

While Mr
Davidson, in swearing that Cream came to him “immediately”, wasprobably doing so in good faith, he had
absolutely no way of being certain thatthis was so. If the prisoner had been secretly freed by the authorities
in 1887,only appearing in
Quebec four years later, when the per-arranged “official”date of his release, July 31st, 1891, was
announced (in low key) Mr Davidsonmight have been deceived into an incorrect assumption as to exactly whenCream left jail.

2) An
affidavit from Cream’s sister-in-law Jessie swore that Cream (to the best of
her knowledge) had been released from prison “on or about 29 July1891,” and stayed with her family in
Quebec until he had sailed for Englandin October 1891. This statement did not tally with one made by her
husbandDaniel to Inspector
Frederick Jarvis, reporting from Montreal on July 4th1892 that Daniel Cream had told him: “..the
prisoner arrived at his (Daniel’s)house in Quebec on the morning of 20th January last but his wife objected
tohis staying there as she did
not like his manner … In consequence he went toBlanchard’s Hotel.” Ruling out Cream’s arrival and whereabouts in Quebec,
itis reasonable to suppose that
Jessie Cream had simply been duped by the samemeans as W. Davidson into believing he had recently been set free.

3)
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency said that Cream had writtento them from prison in December of
1890, requesting an interview. Assumingagain that there had been collusion between Cream and the authorities,
letterscould conceivably have
been penned elsewhere by Cream from the prison...

There is no
evidence as to whether such an interview actually took place, but ifso the Pinkerton agent, who had
probably never met Cream, would be unawarethat he was confronting the look-alike, paid, arguably, to serve the
remainderof Cream’s sentence.
Had it dawned on the authorities, two years after theRipper crimes, that they may inadvertently
have loosed on the world a serialkiller, some such deception would have been essential for their own
protection,as well as Cream’s,
with the object of establishing that he was still in jail until1891 - a cover up of cover ups, as it were.
Based on the premise that there wassuch collusion between Cream and the authorities on the matter of his
earlierrelease, the three
affidavits have little validity.

If it
appears distinctly improbable that Cream had an accomplice serving outhis sentence at Joliet, I would cite an
account made by the celebrated advocate:Sir Edward Marshall Hall, in his biography by Edward Marjoribanks “TheLife of Sir Edward Marshall Hall”. At
Cream’s second murder trial in 1892,

Hall
recognised the prisoner in the dock as a former client whom he had oncedefended at the Old Bailey on a charge
of bigamy.Cream, confronted by
a number of women, all insisting he who had “married” each and every one of them; he was advised by Hall, to plead
guilty.

Cream
eschewed his advice, insisting he was serving a sentence in an Australianprison when the offences were said to
have taken place. Hall sent a cable tothe Sydney authorities, and was astounded to have Cream’s story verified,inasmuch as a man of his description
had in fact been detained by them atthe time in question. The case was accordingly dismissed, leaving a
baffledHall to conclude that
Cream must have a double in the underworld willingfor some reason to provide him with an alibi
- a not unprecedented situationat
a time when, without even an established fingerprinting system, much lessmore recent innovations such as DNA and
blood typing, there were few reliablemeans of identification.

If Marshall
Hall was right in suspecting that his client had a confederate tosupply him with an alibi, it is highly
probable that Cream would in the future,if and when necessary, make further use of such an arrangement; and he
maywell have done so, as soon
as the opportunity arose, in order to abscond fromJoliet.

As against
Bell’s thesis (and my own) it has been observed that Cream’sestablished modus operandi (poisoning
of prostitutes) differed from that ofthe Ripper. However, the ever increasing incidence of unsolved crimes
doessuggest that implicit
reliance on modus operandi is now archaic; and shouldperhaps be replaced by modern methods of
psychological profiling, togetherwith assessments of the criminal’s genetic makeup.

The modus
operandi of both Peter Kurten, the Dusseldorf Ripper and PeterSutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, varied
as follows:Peter Kurten, murder
by means of drowning, strangling, axe attacks, battering,stabbing, and in his own admission,
poisoning. A criminal of Cream’s (andindeed the Ripper’s) devious mentality was more than capable of changinghis modus operandi deliberately to
confuse the police as, wholly consciously,did Kurten. Rumbelow in `The Complete Jack the Ripper’ observes of
Kurten: “More importantly, he
thought that these variations would give him stillgreater sexual satisfaction.” And, in the
same book, regarding the YorkshireRipper. “Sutcliffe’s last six victims have a special significance. None
of themwere prostitutes. All of
them were respectable women. This made a change inthe modus operandi employed.”

Cream
conversely specialized in murdering prostitutes, (or probably anywoman whom he might class as “low”),
but not necessarily in the method ofkilling them. Most certainly he was strongly motivated by a compulsive
sadisticurge, i.e. an intense
desire to inflict suffering - his methods ranging fromblackmail, and the writing of scurrilous
post-cards (inflicting acute mentalsuffering) to poisoning by strychnine (inflicting acute physical
suffering).

The mere
awareness of his victim’s pain was sufficient to afford him intensegratification - he did not require
necessarily to witness the events.

Presuming
that Cream had been the Ripper, and found himself on at leastone occasion uncomfortably close to
capture, it would have been typical ofhim some four years later, confirmed sadist that he was, to resort again
tostrychnine as an equally if
not more agonizing method than the knife – andwithout the attendant risks of being present at the kill.

Bell must
certainly be credited with producing some remarkable materialto support his case, particularly the
photograph showing Cream wearing ahorseshoe pin, precisely as described by George Hutchinson, considered bythe police a reliable eye-witness to
the suspected murderer of Mary Jane Kellyin Miller’s Court. That Cream possessed and continually displayed such apin does not of course in itself prove
that he was the same man spotted byHutchinson - the “lucky” horseshoe was doubtless a popular form of
adornmentat the time. However
there were surely not many men established as sadists,prostitute killers, qualified surgeons, users
of American terminology, (& etc) -all characterized by the Ripper - who also wore horseshoe pins!

More
recently, on November 21st, 2006, in a televised episode of Channel Five’s
“Revealed,” Laura Richards, Behaviour
Psychologist attached to New ScotlandYard’s Violent Crime Directorate, revealed that as a result of compiling
allavailable witness statements
made to the police at the time, she had come upwith an E-Fit photograph which, when superimposed on the above mentionedphotograph of Cream, matched with
astonishing accuracy his jaw structure,nose and prognathous chin.

In `The
Crimes Detection and Death of Jack the Ripper’ (George Weidenfeld &Nicholson, 1987) while in no way
intending to discredit Martin Fido’s splendidbook, he does seem unintentionally to underline the likelihood that Cream
wasthe Ripper. Regarding the
Ripper letters: “The reoccurring
Americanism; `Boss’, does not point to the murderer’snationality. Their sadistic humour does not
necessarily reflect his temperament.The similarity of some letters to the handwriting of the poisoner Neill
Creamdoes not mean that he
wrote them.”

Taken
individually - agreed - but there again, taken collectively: Cream’sbackground was American, he was
arrested for writing sadistic postcards and- what one would assume to be a confirmation of Cream’s guilt rather than
adenial - a handwriting expert
positively identified his writing with that of theRipper.

It seems
extraordinary that Donald Bell, who in my view put forward themost plausible theory of all, backed on
solid research and sound commonsense,
was generally dismissed for suggesting, on grounds too numerous tobe entirely coincidental, that Cream was the
Ripper. Yet at least one filmcompany
produced a star-studded extravaganza based on the extremelyunlikely supposition that Queen Victoria’s
personal physician, Sir WilliamGull
(ailing and in his seventies) abetted by several prominent members of theBritish government, including the Prime
Minister, had committed the ripping

xii in an
attempt to shield the monarchy from scandal. If so, with what dreadedapprehension must the poor dear Queen,
presumably also in on the plot, haveanticipated the visits of her Physician Extraordinary!

Again, the
elaborate theory, reintroduced with due solemnity by Brian Worth,O.B.E. on an I.T.V. Crime Monthly
Special that the Ripper was actually anEast End Jewish immigrant called Aaron Kosminski seemed to be based onthe flimsiest of evidence. Though that
unfortunate person, thrown in ConeyHatch Asylum for what is to be hoped were valid reasons, could read andwrite, he was almost certainly not
wholly at ease in the language of his adopted country. How then to account for
the famous letter, graphically inscribed inred ink and expressed in fluent English (or is it American?) -- a relic
which,despite conflicting
beliefs as to its authenticity, has been observed by thisauthor reverently exhibited on the wall of
the Black Museum at New ScotlandYard,
and therefore presumably regarded by the police as genuinely from Jackthe Ripper. And Mr. Worth formerly assistant
head of the C.I.D.!

Worth’s
Victorian predecessor was Sir Robert Anderson who claimed ratherfeebly in his memoirs `The Lighter Side
of Life’ that he was “almost temptedto disclose the identity of the murderer, but no public benefit would
resultfrom such a course and
the traditions of my own department would suffer.”

The fact
that his department had failed abysmally to apprehend the Ripper,thereby exposing the police force to
stringent criticism, was undoubtedly farmore damaging than any revelation he might, possibly, have been in a
positionto make as to the
identity of the killer. Indeed, were Anderson able to namethe Ripper, it would surely have been his
clear duty, in the interests both of hisdepartment and public security, to have done so.

Anderson, as
it emerged, merely shared a commonly held suspicion (did not,after all, Whitechapel abound with
their sort?) that the Ripper was a Polish Jew,suggesting that it was “a remarkable fact that “people of that class in
the EastEnd will not give up
one of their number to Gentile Justice” - an accusationagainst the integrity of the Jewish community
which was not backed by a vestigeof real evidence and which would no doubt today be considered a clear
breachof race relations. One
might be forgiven for speculating that if the Ripper everhad been brought to book it would have been
by error rather than trial!Nor
were Sir Melville Macnaghten’s notes, written some years after the events,any the more reassuring, since he
seemed to be under the misguided impressionthat his main suspect, the aforementioned Kosminski, had developed
homicidaltendencies as a result
of indulgence, so it was claimed, in “solitary vices”; andwas therefore a perfect candidate for the
role of Ripper. It would seem the policewere so desperate to find a scapegoat for the crimes that practically
anyonewho could be established
as rather eccentric, foreign, weak in the head, of apoetic temperament or downright insane was in
danger of becoming a suspect.

xiii

Into this
category I would place among many others, the likes of Druitt theCricketer (the rumour of his guilt only
surfacing way after 1888, and then viaNcNaghten and his unfounded suspicions); Pedachenko the Assassin (whosemotivation for the rippings, so we are
asked to swallow, was a purported plot bythe Russians to discredit the British police); and Eddy the Royal (who
happenedinconveniently to be
out of town on the night of at least one ripping).

It is surely
a good deal more credible that a cunning and moneyed criminalwith all the hallmarks of a psychotic
killer, bribed his way out of an Illinoisjail earlier than the authorities dared admit, absconded to England where
hecommitted the Ripper
atrocities, and returned to America to hide out until hissupposed release in 1891. Of established
sociopaths, George Chapman was inthe right place at the right time and possessed rudimentary medical
know-how, but no particular predilection for murdering prostitutes; the same
applyingto Frederic Bailey
Deeming who specialised rather in dispatching wives thanwhores. That Deeming had claimed to be the
Ripper was never substantiated, andbesides he did not have the professional expertise demonstrated by the
Ripper-- any more than did the
other butchers, bakers and candlestick makers whoused knives to perform their work. Despite a
certain amount of contradictorymedical
opinion, the majority of doctors who had examined the victims wereconvinced that the Ripper possessed
considerable surgical skill. At the inqueston Annie Chapman, Dr. George Bagster Phillips, who was a Division PoliceSurgeon with twenty years of practical
experience said: “Obviously the workwas that of an expert - or one, at least, who had such knowledge of
anatomicalor pathological
examinations as to be enabled to secure the pelvic organs withone sweep of the knife.” Cream was a
practised and qualified surgeon who hadtrained both in Montreal and St.Thomas’s Hospital, London.

The super
hyped “The Diary of Jack the Ripper” by Shirley Harrison andMichael Barrett which surfaced
dramatically in 1993, purporting to be thelong-lost genuine confession of Liverpool cotton-broker James Maybrick(himself allegedly murdered by his wife
Florence) was exposed as a fraud by anational newspaper.

In the
scholarly “Jack the Ripper. Summing up and Verdict” by Colin Wilsonand Robin Odell (Bantam Press, 1987) it
is observed that there is no hardevidence Cream was the Ripper. Quite so, but with the greatest respect toMessrs Wilson and Odell, neither is
there, in my submission, an iota of evidencethat would stand up in a Court of Law behind any theory hitherto
propoundedas to the identity of
the Whitechapel killer. Nor after more than a century, withthe exception of circumstantial evidence, is
anything likely to emerge.

For this
reason I have, in part, used the technique of psychological profilers,in an attempt to fathom the criminal
mentality of this Victorian sociopath.However, the study as a whole is not based on dramatic representation,
butsolidly researched
documentary records, which are clearly set out in the textand can be corroborated. Licence has only
been employed to illustrate, forinstance,
how Cream’s elaborate scam might have been contrived. Whetheror not it was so contrived must be judged
from the information provided, and which I believe, taken as a whole, will
convince the reader that Thomas Neill Cream, as he himself confessed, was
indeed Jack the Ripper.